


the ordinary order of things

by voksen



Series: weird montreuil identity porn [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Haircuts, M/M, Madeleine Era, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:09:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to go undercover, Javert needs a haircut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ordinary order of things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vejiicakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vejiicakes/gifts).



Madeleine's hands are steady as he tidies the papers atop his desk, arranging them into neat stacks of letters and forms; they are steady as he opens a drawer and sets everything inside in precise order; they are steady even as he slips a small box from within his waistcoat and sets it in the middle of the desk -- but his knuckles are white about the lid as he opens it, and the scissors he lifts from within clatter slightly as he removes them and sets them on the wood next to their box. They are borrowed from the factory; he had sharpened them there, that evening, after the workers had left, and they gleam at him with what feels like accusation: as if, somehow, he should have known that everything would lead to this; as if he should have been prepared. He bows his head beneath the weight of it, leaning on the desk to keep himself upright as he searches within himself for the strength he will need to keep up his patient mayor's mask when Javert arrives.

Looking back, he can see how one thing built on another, leading his steps to the precarious position in which he now stands -- but even with the strength of hindsight, everything has come so naturally one thing after the next. There had been no other way to prevent Javert from summoning more police spies than enabling him to do their work; no way to do that without accompanying him. The madness that followed... he cannot explain it, but he also cannot forget it nor deny it. They have not mentioned it between them since, but he has heard it in the silence between Javert's clipped sentences and seen it in the tension of his shoulders -- and never more so than that afternoon, when Javert had followed his final report with the admission, delivered almost as if in the confines of a confessional, that the length of his hair rendered him too unfashionable to be mistaken for a bourgeois dandy at best, and identifiable at worst.

The difficulty was immediately apparent: he could not go to the barber as himself without it being the talk of Montreuil; there was not time to go to Paris and have it done out of range of gossip. "Then I will do it," Madeleine had said, a heavy weight sinking deep in his stomach. "I am no barber, but if you keep your hat on, it should serve well enough for first meetings, until you can have it done better."

"Monsieur le maire--" Javert had said, but to Madeleine's ears it had rung with the sound of a protest made for form's sake only; there had been a look in Javert's eyes that was something like suspicion and something like the unreadable way Javert had looked at him after -- afterwards.

"Come to my rooms tonight," he had said, ignoring the prickling at the nape of his neck, and bent his head silently over his ledgers until Javert dismissed himself.

 

Now, waiting, he feels torn between prayer and worry. He tidies everything once more, then turns, taking a step away before glancing back, glancing over his desk as if it is a stranger's, trying to imagine himself a different man. It does not go easily; he paces a minute longer before picking the morning's broadsheet out of the trash and spreading it beneath the chair. This is something a respectable barber would do, he thinks; to catch the hair, to keep things tidy. But he has no spare sheets --

There is a firm rap at the door, instantly identifiable, and the idea of the barber crumbles from around him so that it is only Madeleine who opens the door to Javert, who stands as straight in his drab civilian clothes as if he were still in uniform. There is nothing to hide; he has been very careful of that, and yet it is not without an invisible shiver that he stands silently aside and lets Javert enter.

Madeleine takes longer than he might have to lock the door behind him, steadying his nerves with one last deep breath while his back is turned; when he can put it off no longer, he turns. Javert stands by the desk, hat in hand, coat over his arm, looking down at the scissors atop it. There is something less than confident about the set of his shoulders, something almost defensive. His queue is drawn back as precisely as ever, tied with its neat black ribbon, as unchanging and orderly as the man himself; to think of it lying in scattered strands on his floor -- it all seems impossibly unreal.

"Well," Madeleine says, clearing his throat and coming forwards a few paces. 

Javert starts visibly, his hand clenching tight about the brim of his hat -- but he recovers quickly, setting the hat atop the desk and turning to face Madeleine with his usual control. "Well," he says. "Monsieur."

"Please sit."

The hesitation is almost unnoticeable as Javert nods briefly in acknowledgement and sits in the desk chair, draping his coat over the arm with care; if Madeleine had been watching him any less closely, he might have missed it. But it is there, nonetheless, and what worries him most is that he cannot tell what it is -- if it is suspicion, worry, simple nerves, or something else altogether. Before, when he had had the safety of distance, it had always been remarkably easy to read the man; up close, everything is muddy and uncertain. 

"Have you done this before?" Javert asks suddenly, when Madeleine has come to stand at his shoulder.

"No," Madeleine says almost absent-mindedly, reaching for the shears, then checking himself and untying the knot of Javert's ribbon first. "But I will do my best." And it is only the truth: a businessman, of course, has no call to be a barber; in Toulon, there had always been other work more pressing for a strong man -- and even if there had not been, nobody with sense would have handed the man he had been then any kind of blade. Still, as he unwinds the wide ribbon and frees Javert's hair from its queue, it seems almost familiar; then he blinks, shakes his head, and the feeling is gone.

He sets the ribbon on the desk, for lack of a better place to put it, and returns to his task. There is a small tangle at Javert's nape, where the ribbon had caught a little; without conscious thought, Madeleine combs his fingers gently through Javert's hair, easing it out. His hair is thick and soft; it catches slightly on Madeleine's roughened hands as it fills them until he has separated the ends of the strands, leaving his hair fanned loose across his back. 

But looking at it makes him aware that Javert's shoulders are too stiff, too tense, though his head is bowed slightly and his features hidden. Madeleine freezes, hands bare inches away from touching him again, suddenly, horribly aware of how what he has done could have been misconstrued as -- as an intimacy -- and damning himself for the spark of arousal the idea lights in him. "There was a tangle," he says, aware as well of how ridiculous an excuse that sounds. He ought to have set out a comb. He ought not think of the silk of Javert's hair, the warm softness of his skin; the more he tries to drive the thoughts from his mind, the more they plague him. He should have thought of some other way.

"Just do it," Javert says, "Monsieur."

Madeleine nods uselessly and reaches again for the scissors. The first cut, just above his shoulder, takes nearly a foot of hair; the cut lock slips easily to the floor with an almost inaudible whisper. In the silence of Madeleine's held breath, he hears the shudder in Javert's. "Javert," he says. "I do not have to--"

"Monsieur. Please."

It is the please that undoes him, that looses the devil inside him that enjoys the thought of Javert begging, that takes dark, shameful pleasure in cutting his hair like this, in marking him. He bites his lip to keep his breathing from betraying him and prays that Javert will think his silence only a moment of hesitation. "Very well," he says at last, when he feels certain of his control, and begins to cut in earnest, quick snips, one after the other now, until his hair is an even shortness, just below his chin, and the paper beneath the chair is covered with dark coils, curling slightly where they have fallen, like tossed apple-peels.

But not all of them have come away so cleanly as the first; Madeleine sets the scissors on the desk again and brushes gently at the blunt ends of Javert's hair with his fingertips, dislodging a few caught strands. "I will leave it a little long," he says, half to fill the heavy silence, "so that you may have it more easily fixed later."

Javert only nods, his newly-cropped hair swinging freely. There is a strand caught behind his ear; Madeleine frees it, unable to keep his fingertips from brushing the shell of his ear as he does, and quickly cuts it even with the rest. This much has been the easy part, he knows, despite everything; Javert could most likely have done it himself with scissors and a shaving-mirror.

Again, he combs his fingers through his hair, first settling it, then lifting up a section and trimming it inch by inch until it finally seems short enough to be passable, but long enough that some better barber could salvage it easily into something more fashionable. "There," he mutters to himself, moving to the next and the next, working slowly, cautiously, and trying to ignore the way his prick stiffens further at every brush of his fingers against Javert's scalp.

When he has finished, Javert looks... well, not a laughingstock, and that had been the best Madeleine had hoped for. His shortened hair falls over his creased brow in a gentle wave that does not do a very great deal to soften his tense, narrow features. But it does change them, as his new clothes changed them; together he may well be unrecognizable to anyone who does not have specific cause to remember him.

It is also strangely -- ridiculously -- tempting; Madeleine's fingers twitch with the urge to brush it aside, to touch his face: to give in. He does not; he does not even glance down to see whether Javert is again as affected as he. There is hair trapped at the back of Javert's stiff collar from his trimming earlier; he brushes that off instead, his hand sliding down when he is finished at last, when he has no more excuses, to rest on Javert's broad shoulder. "There," he says again.

Slowly, Javert reaches up and touches his own hair, fingering the short strands at his temple, his eyes still downcast, his posture closed. "Thank you," he mutters, and Madeleine shifts his hand away to rest instead on the high wooden back of the chair. He had touched Javert's shoulder just so, before, and the memory burns uncomfortably and unforgettably in the back of his mind; that small distance no longer seems so safe, and he steps back a pace or two, tugging at his shirt and trousers in an awkward attempt to hide what proximity has done to him.

From those few steps away, from that different angle, one thing is immediately clear: "You will have to shave," he says, and just as immediately regrets the words as Javert glances up at him, hand still twined in his own hair. 

"Shave?" Javert echoes.

"Your whiskers," Madeleine says. "They are -- I'm sorry -- distinctive, like your hair. I would know you in the street, even now." It is true, but he cannot think of why he is calling Javert's attention to it -- or to himself, and to how well he has memorized a policeman's face. It is true he needs the smugglers caught, for the safety and prosperity of the town, but surely...

No. Those are not Madeleine's thoughts. He shivers briefly, tempted to look away so that Javert will not meet his eyes; he holds steady. "I will fetch my razor," he says. "But I have only cold water. Is it--"

"I suppose I should not go out, then," Javert says, almost distantly. There is something changed in his eyes, something lost, though his face is neutral enough; it is as if the snip of the scissors had cut more than hair from him. Madeleine knows that feeling well, has seen it a thousand times -- though he had never expected to see it again, and much less in this man, no matter how faint and muted an echo it is. "Yes. Cold water is -- fine. I do not mind it."

At that, Madeleine retreats to his bedroom; he forces himself to walk slowly enough that it cannot quite be called flight. His basin and razor are set up for the morning as always; the ewer of water drawn and placed next to it already so that he may shave and wash before the portress brings him his daily coffee. When he looks into the small mirror hung above it, it is with a shudder -- but, though there is a faint hint of flush in his cheeks, and his eyes are perhaps too wide, he does not look the beast he feels. The hardness of his prick is nearly concealed by the cut of his trousers and his earlier fumbling; he presses his hand to it almost unconsciously, remembering Javert's tight, rough grip and the slick flood of his come, and that one touch is nearly enough to bring him to climax.

He forces his hand away, leaning heavily on his dressing table, his breath coming too quickly. For over a week he has been able to keep himself under control; he has thought of Javert, of course, but not-- not in this way. Now, alone with him, with Javert made vulnerable and changed, it seems like he cannot think of him in any other way. It seems terrible to want him so, to enjoy the sight of a man so undone, but he cannot stop the mad twirl of his thoughts or the heavy pulse between his legs.

But he has been too long; quickly, he pours the basin full and takes it and the towel up in one arm, his brush, razor, and soap in the other. When he returns, Javert is still seated in the chair, his brow drawn tight as if in thought or concentration, his fingers slowly, rhythmically stroking the sleeve of his old coat where it drapes across the arm of his chair. Madeleine forces his eyes away and arranges everything on the table. "Do you want the mirror?"

The quiet hush of fingers on fabric ceases. "Monsieur..."

Madeleine presses his fingers to the wood of the desk so hard that his knuckles whiten, half afraid of the answer and half eager for it. "Or do you wish me to --"

"Yes," Javert says, so quickly that Madeleine cannot help but look back. Javert seems shocked at his own haste; he recovers his composure quickly, though with a clear effort. "If it is not-- an imposition," he adds stiffly. "Monsieur."

Perhaps it is. Certainly Madeleine ought not to; he ought to go and fetch the mirror and then send Javert away. Instead he nods once, jerkily, and says -- "Unbuckle your stock, please."

Javert's lips part slightly, his eyes darkening unmistakably in the second before he turns his head away to undo the buckle at the base of his neck, sliding the thick black leather from about his throat with the thoughtless ease of long practice. His shirt gapes open as he draws it away, candlelight flickering in the hollow and shadow of his throat, and Madeleine's hands tremble on his shaving-brush. 

"You may put it on the desk," he says, and Javert does so; the clink of the buckle against the wood sounds terribly loud, as does the scratch of the brush against the soap. When he has a lather built up, he smooths it into Javert's whiskers carefully, but he cannot avoid the brush of his knuckles against the stubble-roughened skin. His pulse is fast, racing in mirror of Madeleine's own, and it is only the knowledge that stopping now would seem strange and suspicious that gives Madeleine the courage to go on.

When he takes up the razor and steps to Javert's side, the weight of Javert's eyes on his hands seems almost unbearable. If this is a test -- and he must believe it is, at least in part, lest he lose his senses completely -- it is a dangerous one for them both. Gently, he sets his free hand underneath Javert's chin, tilting his head to the side and brushing aside the collar of his shirt. Javert is perfectly still under his fingertips, a living statue, his breathing nearly too shallow to detect.

Madeleine has only once shaved whiskers so thick before; he reaches backwards in his mind, remembering that distant, clouded first morning. A very little at a time, so as not to tangle the blade. Careful strokes, in order not to nick skin unused to the touch of steel. The face of a free man looking back from the mirror. He slides his fingers from Javert's chin to the side of his face, aware in the back of his mind that it is too like a caress. He does not give himself more time to think of it.

The first stroke of the blade is surprisingly easy; it glides smoothly over Javert's skin, taking a small patch of his whiskers with it. He wipes the razor, rinses it, checks to make sure he has not cut him, and does it again. It is different than shaving his own face -- the angles are all wrong, the planes of Javert's face narrower, flatter -- and so much slower. But eventually it is done; he draws the side of his thumb across the smooth line of Javert's cheekbone, wiping away a stray fleck of soap somehow missed by both razor and cloth, and finds that his hand cups Javert's face easily, fingers sliding back into the short wave of his hair.

Javert is very nearly unrecognizable now, save for the too-familiar firm set of his mouth and the dark hunger in his eyes that rekindles Madeleine's own, blunted by the concentration of shaving him. "Monsieur," he says, and for the first time his gaze flickers openly down to Madeleine's crotch. The uncertainty he had shown earlier is gone, as if lifted with the blade of Madeleine's razor as easily as his whiskers; he reaches up and sets a hand on Madeleine's thigh, where Madeleine stands frozen beside the chair. "This time," Javert says, "this time you did order me inside."

He had not thought of that. He ought to have thought of that -- Javert's thumb brushes against the side of his half-hard prick and he gasps between his teeth, his fingers tightening briefly in Javert's hair, the heel of his hand pressed tight against his chin. Then Javert's fingers are at the buttons of his trousers, and Madeleine is saying, helplessly, blindly, "You do not have to -- Javert --" although he wants this, has been wanting it ever since he undid Javert's ribbon and let his hair fall loose about his shoulders.

Javert mutters something that sounds like "I ought to," but Madeleine is not sure of it; the blood rushes louder than the ocean in his ears as Javert pulls him free of his trousers, coaxing him quickly back to full hardness with three or four quick strokes. He leans forward, twisting in his chair, and before Madeleine can object or step back he has shifted his hand and pressed his lips awkwardly against Madeleine's prick.

They are soft, Madeleine thinks nonsensically, his mind spinning itself away into gibbering nothingness. Soft and warm and gentle, like nothing he had ever expected to feel -- and then Javert licks him, his tongue sliding up the vein along the base of his shaft like wet fire, stealing his breath away in a wordless moan that only ends when Javert sits back enough to glance upwards again. Whatever he sees in Madeleine's face must encourage him, for he does it again: first the kiss, higher this time, so that when after a few agonizingly long seconds his tongue flickers out again, it curls up and across the sensitive head. "God," Madeleine says, "Oh, _God._ "

There is something fitting that it is Javert who drives him to blasphemy like this, who pulls these words from his lips with the unholy work of his own, but he cannot think of what, not when Javert's tongue is playing over the slit of his prick, lapping at the wetness he finds there, swallowing it down. He can hardly manage thought at all, and it is on instinct alone, the sheer unconscious desire for more, that the hand he still has tangled in Javert's hair tugs his head forward.

As if he had intended to all along, Javert simply lets Madeleine's prick slide between his lips, over that too-soft tongue, one hand wrapped around the base of it and the other still braced against Madeleine's thigh. It is so new, it is entirely different from the feeling of a hand on him, so hot and so slick -- he cannot help himself, he thrusts once, gently, into his mouth, feeling the head of his prick rub against the inside of Javert's cheek, feeling the dangerous ridge of his teeth. Trembling, he braces his free hand on the desk and loosens the other from Javert's hair, pushing his new fringe back away from his face. Javert's lips are taut around him; with an unsteady hand, he brushes his fingertips across them, traces that wide stretch before finally letting his hand settle down to Javert's shoulder.

When Javert moans around his cock, low and muffled, it vibrates through him so that it is all he can do to keep from coming immediately, his hand whiteknuckled on the desk. "I'm going to," he manages to gasp, "you must -- Javert--"

He means for Javert to sit back again, to take his mouth away, perhaps to replace it with his hand; instead Javert nods as if in agreement, bobbing his head further down Madeleine's prick -- and sucks at it, his tongue sweeping implacably across the underside, his hand moving in quick strokes over the length he cannot fit into his mouth.

His hips jerk forwards against his will, his grip tightening on Javert's shoulder. It feels wrong to do this to him, to think of spilling inside his mouth, and yet the thought that Javert _wants_ it of him is also pleasing in a strange, animal way. "God," he whispers again, pushing deeper yet, this time with slow deliberation.

Javert makes a thick, choked noise that sends a shock through him -- the tightening of his throat about the head of Madeleine's prick is incredible -- but sucks him all the harder, opening his eyes and looking up at him. That, finally, is too much, that dark glazed stare; Madeleine cannot look away as he shudders, gasps, and comes, his prick jerking hard in Javert's mouth, rubbing against his tongue. He is barely aware of Javert swallowing around him, barely able to keep his feet; everything but the rush of pleasure that floods him seems distant and unreal.

When he regains his senses, Javert's mouth is still on his slowly softening cock, his tongue lapping gently at the head as if he wishes to draw out every last drop he can. Madeleine strokes his knuckles against Javert's smooth cheek, pulling a faint noise from him; he touches his chin, the corner of his mouth. "That's enough," he says, "thank you."

Javert sits back at last, his lips reddened and swollen. "Yes, monsieur," he says, his voice slightly hoarse, and begins to rebutton Madeleine's trousers.

For the first time in a long while, Madeleine looks away from his face, along the long line of his exposed throat -- he cannot help but touch it, running two fingers gently across the fine, pale skin, feeling the flutter of his breath -- and down. Javert's coat has shifted out of his lap, hanging loosely to the floor, and his cock strains visibly against his worn trousers, a thick, lewd curve with a dark wet patch at the tip. It sends a shiver of desire through Madeleine, sated and oversensitive as he is; it seems difficult to believe that Javert is so hard, so near to climax simply from sucking his cock, that he could enjoy such a thing so thoroughly. He bends down, sliding his finger slowly over the thin cloth, feeling the heat of his skin beneath.

Javert leans against him, turning his face against Madeleine's body as he fumbles the last of his buttons back into their holes; Madeleine presses the palm of his hand hard against his prick, and Javert groans, pushing up into the steady pressure with tiny, uneven jerks of his hips. "Please," he says, half-muffled, "please-- ah--"

Madeleine wants to feel him skin to skin, wants to take his cock in hand again and draw his fingers along the thick ridge, to smear the slick wetness down from the head of his prick along the shaft, to wrap his fist around him -- but he does not want to, _cannot_ stop touching him, even for the few seconds it would take to undo his trousers. He thumbs over the head of Javert's prick instead, rubbing at the dampened fabric, feeling him shudder and moan and tense, as if frozen on the edge; he slides his free hand slowly down the center of Javert's back, where his queue ought to have been, and Javert comes with an unintelligible gasp, his spend soaking through his trousers in quick heavy pulses to wet Madeleine's hand.

For long moments they do not move; Javert's breath slows gradually, his prick softens beneath Madeleine's fingers, but he is still solid and real. When Madeleine steps away at last to clean his hand on the edge of the towel, the dazed pleasure lingers in Javert's face for a few seconds more. It makes him look a different man more thoroughly than his shortened hair and clean-shaven cheeks in a way Madeleine does not know how to express.

"I am sorry," he says, and does not explain that it is an apology for far more than a pair of ruined trousers.


End file.
